Action of an intermittent beam of radiant heat upon gaseous matter
✍ Scribed by John Tyndall
- Publisher
- Elsevier Science
- Year
- 1881
- Tongue
- English
- Weight
- 678 KB
- Volume
- 111
- Category
- Article
- ISSN
- 0016-0032
No coin nor oath required. For personal study only.
✦ Synopsis
297
to speak, on a metal disc of iridio-platinum, heating it to redness. It was shown with this tube that the direction of the atoms could be deflected by a magnet. The experiments were as beautiful as they were instructive.
ACTION OF AN INTERMITTENT BEAM OF RADIANT
HEAT UPON GASEOUS MATTER.
By JOHN TYNDALL~ F.R.S. Read before the Royal Society January 3, 1881.
The Royal Society has already done me the honor of publishing a long series of memoirs on the interaction of radiant heat and gaseous matter. These memoirs did not escape criticism. Distinguished men, among whom the late Professor Magnus and the late Professor Buff maybe more specially mentioned, examined my experiments, and arrived at results different from mine. Living workers of merit have also taken up the question, the latest of whom,* while justly recognizing the extreme difficulty of the subject, aald while verifying, so far as their experiments reached, what I had published regarding dry gases, find me to have fallen into what they consider grave errors in my treatment of vapors.
blone of these investigators appear to me to have realized the true strength of my position in its relation to the objects I had in view. Occupied for the most part with details, they have failed to recognize the stringency of my work as a whole, and have not taken into account the independent support rendered by the various parts of the investigation to each other. They thus ignore verifications, both general and special, which are to me of conclusive force. Nevertheless, thinking it due to them and me to submit the questions at issue to a fresh examination, I resumed, some time ago, the threads of the inquiry. The results shall, in due time, be communicated to the R0yal Society; but, meanwhile, I would ask permission to bring to the notice of the Fellows a novel mode of testing the relations of radiant heat to gaseous matter, whereby singularly instructive effects have been obtained.
After working for some time with the thermopile and galvanometer, it ocaurred to me several weeks ago that the results thus obtained